Pesta Blogger Plus and Celebrating Diversities

Pesta Blogger 2010 is on the way with a new chairperson (Rara), a a new concept (Pesta Blogger Plus) and new theme (Celebrating Diversities). What does this all mean?

Let’s start with the chairperson. As Unspun‘s written before, she’s Irayani Queencyputri, better known in the blogging community as Rara. She’s the first woman to become the chair of Pesta Blogger . She also belongs to a younger generation and has strong ideas of doing things a bit differently from the past. So we shall see some welcome changes to Pesta Blogger that is running into its fourth year this year.

The concept has also had a tweaking. Since 2007 when Pesta Blogegr began the use of social media has increased. So have the platforms. There is now micro-blogging in the form of Twitter, geo-location based services in the form of Foursquare. And of course there is also the seemingly ubiquitous Facebook. There’s also huge communities of onliners such as Kaskus.us.

This year’s Pesta Blogger tries to be more inclusive of these new platforms. Hence Pesta Blogger + or Pesta Blogger Plus.(Yeah, yeah NOT plus plus for those of you with dirty minds).

Then there’s the theme. Each year the steering committee tries to come up with a theme that is relevant for the moment. In 2007, the inaugural year for Pesta Blogger the theme was Suara Baru Indonesia (The New Voice of Indonesia); in 2008 when blogging communities began to emerge and to carry on offline activities it was Blogging for Society and in 2009, after a rather potentially divisive general elections it was One Spirit, One Nation.

This year the theme is Celebrating Diversities to capture the potential synergy that can be harnessed with the greater involvement of bloggers and blogging communities from the regions, as well as virtual blogging communities that have sprung up around particular interests such as fashion, food and other fascinations.

For more about this year’s Pesta Blogger, its younger steering committee and the conversations taking place about how the event should shape up this year go to pestablogger.com.